if you say your using it for educational purposes, then they should give you a discount. I got the adobe creative suite package for about $250 at a student discount, which included Photoshop,illustrator, and in design. The only thing is that you need to prove that you are a student somewhere. If you are going to college then you can use your college ID to help prove that you are a student. I hope this helps!

OP,respect for not downloading it illegaly. so many hypocrites talk about loving the program but dont mind illegaly getting hold of it and not contributing towards the efforts they claim to love.

cant talk on the photoshop front,but as regards to GIMP,is it modded with both the GIMP painter and paint studio mods?

if not,get it sorted ASAP,it adds so much more useability to GIMP-about both mods- [link]GIMP paint studio- [link]GIMP painter- [link]

and am not sure if are aware of this or if its still around,but there has been a GIMP mod for years to make GIMP single windowed like photoshop,think it was called gimp shop.the newest unstable/developer version has a single windowed mode though but its a tiny bit dodgy.

woud recommend checking out the following programs along with others have mentioned to-these are free and open source but they have more specialist uses than GIMP, mypaint- [link]alchemy- [link]

if have got a spare USB stick, theres another alternative- download YUMI- [link]there is a linux distro just for artists called artistX with all its default programs tailored to the artist- well worth checking it out,had downloaded an ISO of it once but it had got corrupted and our net is useless to keep downloading large files, its website is- [link] it just needs the ISO downloading and adding to YUMI which will make the USB stick bootable with it.

I had photoshop 7.0 for years that someone got me for free but the version stopped working so here's some tips for you from my recent experience:

a) Gimp has a different layout but it relatively similar to photoshop AND IS FREE.b) Sai is a lot earlier to use then Gimp but lacks a writing tool, however overall its superior to photoshop when it comes to drawings. It cost 5250 yen which isn't that bad for most currencies (it was about $70 canadian which is a fuckton less then photoshop which is like... $200 or something like that).

I got mine free from my school, since it's used in the education. Try to save some money, birthdays and christmas are great for getting stuff you can't afford. Your school might have an option for it, too, or they could help you to get some discount. Apart from that, there isn't much to do unless you want to break the price Adobe offers. There's nothing in between, really.

There is a big difference, but if you haven't used photoshop before, starting out in GIMP is incredibly helpful. I started out in GIMP and was very happy with it until I got photoshop, and it's definitly better than nothing.So, go and get GIMP right away! There you can learn the basics, and if you found out that Digital Art might be nothing for you then you haven't spent a lot of money for nothing, at least

I don't know any other free programs apart from GIMP, I think it's the best you can find out there. There is Paint Tool Sai, which is alot cheaper than Photoshop, which have a 30-days trial if you're curious. Apart from them, I don't know.

Could try 30 day trial see how you get on with it. Then there are student discounts as Katara-Alchemist pointed out.The there are obviously free applications like GIMP, I'm not familiar with the program myself, but have heard it's good for what it is.